We've gotten about 4 cm of snow so far today, with more coming down until this evening. Cassie loves it; I have mixed feelings. At least the temperature has gone up a bit, getting up to -0.6°C for the first time since around this time on Monday.
Elsewhere:
- Federal Judge Aileen Cannon (R-SDFL) got overruled again, this time after her corrupt effort to block Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing his report on January 6th.
- George Will bemoans Congress ceding so much of its authority to the office of the President, especially given who will take that office in ten days.
- Just three corrupt Chicago cops will cost the city almost $34 million in settlements, making me wonder why we don't pay those settlements out of the police pension fund.
- Pamela Paul objects to historians opining about politics, which is actually one of the things they've always done.
- Five years after the pandemic began, we still haven't gotten back in the habit of being out in public, according to Derek Thompson at The Atlantic.
Finally, Maplewood Brewing has started expanding its Logan Square taproom into the other half of the building it occupies. I don't get there often, but I enjoy going back. Can't wait to see what their restaurant looks like when it's done. I also need to get to Cherry Circle Room or the CAA Drawing Room soon, as it looks like the management transition from Land & Sea to Boka may change some things.
Somehow it's the 3rd day of 2025, and I still don't have my flying car. Or my reliable high-speed regional trains. Only a few of these stories help:
I'm also spending some time looking over the Gazetteer that underpins Weather Now. In trying to solve one problem, I discovered another problem, which suggests I may need to re-import the whole thing. At the moment it has fewer than 100,000 rows, and the import code upserts (attempts to update before inserting) by default. More details as the situation warrants.
I don't always agree with what Josh Marshall says, but this morning he encapsulates the chaos perfectly:
Even beyond what I described above, with these two rough beasts [the OAFPOTUS and Musk] slouching their way into 2025, you have probably never had a time in American history where you have all the billionaires lining up and saying pretty much openly and loudly that we’re here as Team Billionaire and here to support the billionaire President and excited to usher in a new era of government of the billionaires, quite literally by the billionaires and really obviously for the billionaires.
To wrap it all together you also have the gobs of public time and attention and resources lit on fire by the tantrums, egomania and sundry character disorders of people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk because that’s a central feature of billionairedom: the rules don’t apply to you. Things most of us had to get straight with when we were in our 20s, because we live in the real world, guys like Elon Musk have magnified 100-fold by their 50s because the rules don’t apply to them.
It's going to be a long two years, but it's very likely the American voting public will like this Congress even less than the do-nothing Congress we just finished. And, of course, the OAFPOTUS doesn't care.
The OAFPOTUS probably didn't care one whit about the compromise spending bill Congress looked set to pass earlier this week, and probably didn't understand how difficult it was for the tiny Republican majority to pass it knowing they'd need Democratic votes in the Senate. Worlds-griftiest-man Elon Musk didn't care either, which didn't stop him from throwing a grenade into the Speaker's office and putting the government at risk of shutting down in (checks watch) 9½ hours.
I won't say much more except to link to a few reactions in the press:
Oh, and one other thing. After shoving a stick into the spokes in the US, Musk promptly endorsed the far-right, Nazi-in-all-but-name Alternative für Deutschland party. Really, he just needs an underground lair to become a true Bond villain.
We're still 30 days from the OAFPOTUS taking office again, and we're already back to late-2020 levels of idiocy. It's going to be a long four years.
Today is the 30th anniversary of the trope-namer first appearing in Calvin and Hobbes, making the comic strip self-referential at this point. (It's the ur-noodle incident.)
Unfortunately, today's mood rather more reflects The Far Side's famous "Crisis Clinic" comic from the same era:
Let's hope tomorrow's mood is a different Far Side comic...
This morning's stand-up meeting begins in a moment, at the only time of day that works for my Seattle-Chicago-UK team (8am/10am/4pm respectively). After, I have these queued up:
Finally, a new paper found something I've long suspected: small amounts of alcohol actually do help you speak a foreign language better. (Large amounts do not.)
* The X in "Xitter" is pronounced "sh," as in Xi Jinping.
The weather doesn't seem that great for a planned 15-kilometer walk through Logan Square and Avondale to visit a couple of stragglers on the Brews & Choos Project. We've got 4°C under a low overcast, but only light winds and no precipitation forecast until Monday night. My Brews & Choos buddy drew up a route starting from the east end of the 606 Trail and winding up (possibly) at Jimmy's Pizza Cafe.
Also, I've joined BlueSky, because it's like Xitter without the xit. The Times explains how you, too, can join. (Cassie also has an account, of course.)
My 4-minute train to Clybourn leaves in 45 minutes, so I want to save a few things for later reading:
Finally, NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day this morning has a diptych of the Earth, one side from Saturn and the other side from Mercury. What makes it even more interesting is that both photos were taken 19 July 2013, making it the first time the Earth was photographed simultaneously from two other worlds in the solar system.
The OAFPOTUS has nominated TV personality and shameless quack Dr Oz to head up Medicare, which is of a piece with the rest of his cabinet nominations so far.
I think the OAFPOTUS has some other grievance than against the government, law enforcement, international norms, rational thought, and everything else he's railed against since 2015.
Clearly, the OAFPOTUS wants to drive The Onion out of business.
Yesterday I posted a short video from Robert Wright reminding everyone that the OAFPOTUS and his hangers-on thrive on negative energy. The moral: don't waste your own energy on his bullshit.
For example, I haven't agonized at all about his kakistocratic nominations for top cabinet posts, for the simple reason that I think they're distractions from the Republican Party's principal goals of increasing the wealth of billionaires and stealing as much as they can rake in from the American People. I mean, the only person in Congress more hated than Ted Cruz is Matt Gaetz; I have little doubt that the Senate will bounce his ass to a bottom-feeding lobby firm.
But nominating Gaetz and having him fail miserably doesn't bother the OAFPOTUS at all. Because when Gaetz fails to get confirmed, the OAFPOTUS will nominate someone even worse. He did this sort of thing more than once during his first term.
The United States has just re-elected Zaphod Beeblebrox to the presidency. We should really care more about the six guys with the black ships, and not worry about the idiot with two heads and three arms. (I'm just waiting for some Fox News guest to finally declare, "Donald's just zis guy, you know?")
Again: let's don't let the flim-flam distract us. Oppose the policies, not the pronouncements. We'll have enough to do for the next few years without wasting our breath on every trolling utterance that comes from the Administration.
I've got a couple of minutes before I descend into the depths of a very old codebase that has had dozens of engineers mucking about in it. Time enough to read through these:
Finally, everyone take six minutes and listen Robert Wright as he reminds us not to get distracted by the OAFPOTUS's trolling: